Silvia Foti - The Nazis Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather was a War Criminal

Jonas NoreikaGeneral Stormin his uniform as an officer in the Seventh Grand Duke Butigeidis Regiment of the Lithuanian Army in the 1930s, perhaps on his December 26, 1936, wedding day. Colorized

Praise for

The Nazis Granddaughter

A mesmerizing account of personal culpability told with brutal honesty, raw emotion, and meticulous recall. Fotis keen insight and elegant writing have the power to change the way we view family secrets and historic revisionism.

MARILYN E. KINGSTON, former vice president of the International Network of Adult Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

The Nazis Granddaughter is a remarkable true story about family and loyalty. Ms. Fotis exceptional courage in confronting a dark truth in the face of familial and nationalistic pressure is especially relevant in these turbulent times.

DAVE DAVIS, former senior film executive at 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures

Silvia Fotis book is an inspiring tale of civic courage, of a difficult struggle for historical truth. All the odds were stacked against her, but she bravely fought on, even though she found herself pitted against her family, her community, and practically an entire nation. A thrilling tale of personal redemption, I heartily recommend it.

EFRAIM ZUROFF, Chief Nazi Hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the centers Israel office and Eastern European affairs

The Nazis Granddaughter is a magnificent piece of investigative journalism. It reads as a fast-paced novel. I could not put this down.

STEVE LINDE, former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post and current editor in chief of the Jerusalem Report

The Nazis Granddaughter is a daring, unsettling journey into the darkness of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Through extensive research and interviews, Silvia Foti unravels the image of a heroic grandfather revered by her family and her native country, piecing together the portrait of a war criminal responsible for the genocide of thousands of Jews. A necessary and illuminating read.

ELENA GOROKHOVA, author of A Mountain of Crumbs and Russian Tattoo

Not of Lithuanian descent, a child in the Canadian bush during WWII, I was nonetheless fascinated by Silvia Fotis exhaustively researched journey to get to the bottom of a familyindeed, a Lithuanianfairy tale with her beloved grandfather, known as General Storm, at its center. This testimony, gathered at much personal cost to herself, is hugely instructive of how the weight of unacknowledged history grows heavier over the years, not lighter, and cannot be lightened or lifted until the truth has been revealed and proclaimed. Her tenacity as shown in her book is beyond admirable. It is also suspenseful, filled with insight, and eminently readable.

SHARON BUTALA, Officer of the Order of Canada and author of twenty books, including Season of Fury and Wonder, shortlisted for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize and winner of the City of Calgary/W.O. Mitchell Book Prize

The Nazis Granddaughter is an introspective and sensitive account of Silvia Fotis search for the truth about her heroic grandfather, who had been incarcerated by the Nazis in 1943 as a Lithuanian nationalist and executed by the Soviet regime as an anti-communist resister in 1947. Despite systematic prevarication by Lithuanian officials, friends, and family, she gradually assembles the contrasting portrait of a man who was also an antisemitic pamphleteer in the 1930s and a Nazi collaborator and Jew-killer in 1941.

CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING, Frank Porter Graham Professor of History emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Silvia Foti has written a brave book at great personal cost that looks at how nationalism destroys historical truth, and personal truth as well.

MICHAEL GOLDFARB, host of the First Rough Draft of History podcast and author of Emancipation: How Liberating Europes Jews From the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance

I couldnt put this book down. The Nazis Granddaughter is part detective story, part family saga, part the morality tale we so desperately need to hear today, especially those of us unwilling to examine the past because its emotionally easier to continue living in ignorance. It takes a courageous and deeply moral person to go to that frightening place: Silvia Foti is that person. She combines the research skills of a historian with the ethical concerns and instincts of the best investigative journalists to arrive at a very difficult truth, one that throughout her personally wrenching journey she does not want to believe. This is an important book: honest, brave, and superbly researched and written.

DAIVA MARKELIS, author of White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life and professor emerita at Eastern Illinois University

I think the book is a true revelation and a significant personal journey by a very brave, good person. What struck me the most is the complicity of silence by so many, including her mother and grandmother. The unanswered question is: Did her mother expect her to reveal the truth or continue with the cover-up? This book is much more than uncovering another Jew-killer.

PATRICIA L. GLASER, member of the board of governors for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a trial lawyer and chairwoman of her firms litigation department who was described as a Legal Legend by the Hollywood Reporter and recognized by Lawdragon as one of the five hundred leading lawyers in America

Silvia Foti grew up adoring the memory of her grandfather. Jonas Noreika was a national hero of Lithuania, a renowned resistance fighter who had battled both Nazis and Soviets and was executed for treason in 1947 in a Russian prison. Over time, his family had elevated him to near-saintly status, evoking his comforting presence at holidays and every family gathering. For decades, Silvias mother had in fact devoted herself to gathering materials for what was to be a glowing paean to her fathers memory. The book remained unwritten until, on her deathbed, she exacted a promise from Silvia to complete the work she had begun. The next 18 years of Silvias life were consumed with fulfilling her promise, and would change her life irrevocably and in unexpected ways.

As she embarked on her research, each answer seemed to yield a dozen more questions. Perhaps she wasnt asking the right questions? Perhaps her premise was not correct? But whispers of a dark side to Jonas began to arise. They were faint at first, and later harder to dispel. Cracks began to appear in her pristine portrait of Jonas. Doubts paralyzed her. What if he wasnt a perfect patriot after all? What if he wasnt the man that family lore had burnished to a brilliant sheen so long ago?

In the end, Silvias journalistic discipline won out over her cherished family history and love of Lithuania. She had discovered in herself a duty to the truth, no matter how painful. She had to find out definitively if Jonas Noreika, the Lithuanian hero, her beloved grandfather, was in fact a Nazi collaborator and responsible for the deaths of over fourteen thousand Jews in her ancestral home. While visiting a Holocaust site in Lithuania, she found herself unable to pray, but after accepting the reality of her grandfathers life, she instead wrote, I have no words. I do not know what to say. But I have come. Is it enough to bear witness? What else can I do? I cannot undo the past, or redress my grandfathers actions, but I am willing to face what was done. I am sorry, so sorry, for the unimaginable loss.